Longest Day

“My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”  Coach Jim Valvano

Phil Lane with Miranda, Alissa, Tori  and Anthony; photo by Delia Soto-Lane

"The Longest Day" (1962) was a rather over-dramatic account of D-Day with big-name stars of a half-century ago, such as Richard Burton, John Wayne, and Robert Mitchum, but the phrase also refers to the summer solstice that literally results in the occurrence of the longest day of the year.

On Fathers Day I got calls from Phil and Dave as well as granddaughter Alissa, who had her dad’s family over for spring rolls and the seventh game of the NBA finals won by Cleveland, led by “King” Lebron James, the series leader in scoring, rebounds, blocks, and assists.

In “Couple share lifelong love of Miller Beach” Post-Trib columnist Jeff Manes  reported that Judy Ayers donated cookbooks to the Calumet Regional Archives.  Judy told him:

              My mother, Barbara Neal, was the owner of Barbara's Cover Girl Beauty Shop for 40 years and her business was always on Lake Street. For most of those years, it was located next to Ayers Realtors where she rented her side of the store from Gene.

Mom's patrons, ladies from Miller, Gary, Ogden Dunes, Portage and Lake Station, sold their community or church cookbooks as fundraisers. My mother bought them to support her customers and their causes. In each cookbook there was the history of the church or organization. After every recipe was the name of who contributed it.

It was always fun to see the recipes friends and neighbors served their families. Many years later, the cookbooks and the names of the recipe contributors serve as reminders of the ladies my mother knew.

In 1922 N. Guy Ayers, Gene’s great-uncle, hung out a shingle to launch Ayers Realty.  Gene’s father Bruce joined the business in 1946 after serving in World War II.  Gene, like Judy a 1965 Wirt High School grad, said:

            When I was really young, we lived in Aetna. They hadn't yet built the 1950s Fifield-Aetna houses, so we lived on Aetna Street at the end of a sand dune. The Fifields took raw land and subdivided it into all those inexpensive homes that were built in that post-war era. Close to 70 percent of the houses in Miller were built from '46 to '66.

My father was in partnership with some people who were going to build a workingman's lakefront housing project where Bethlehem Steel (ArcelorMital) is now. It was going to be called Duna Beach, but Dad's partner became gravely ill and Duna Beach never happened.

At Tom Eaton’s for bridge Pat Cronin mentioned that she is in a knitting club with Judy Ayers.  Last year the group made a hundred caps for kids with cancer.  I finished second to Brian Barnes, who with wife Connie will host next month’s get together.  A great cook, Eaton served Bavarian cream cake.

At Primary Care to renew three blood pressure prescriptions, I learned that Dr. Ostroski's daughter is teaching in the Nursing Department at Valparaiso University.  I wonder if she’s met Chemistry professor Julie Peller, John Ban’s daughter, who who left IUN after getting screwed over for promotion by the old boy network.  I was tempted to suggest that Len  quit the rat race and see about becoming a professor at IUN Medical School.

Chesterton High School hosted a ceremony in honor of 2014 grad Mitchell Alexander Winey, who drowned in Texas along with 8 others in a military training accident when floodwaters washed their transport truck from what was supposed to be a shallow crossing.  Class president and captain of Chesterton’s soccer team, Winey was a West Point cadet.  During the ceremony Indiana senator Joe Donnelly remarked: “I will never make a better nomination or make an easier one than this one [to the military academy.]”

Funeral services took place over the weekend for many of the 49 victims of the terrorist attack in Orlando.  Because it occurred on Latin Night and approximately half of the dead were Puerto Rican, Attorney-General Loretta Lynch announced that the FBI is investigating whether it was a hate crime against Latinos as well as gays.

 

NWI Times photo by John Luke 

Members of the Pokagon band of Potawatomi Indians held a blessing to Mother Nature at the waters of Lake George at Festival Park in Hobart.  NWI Times reporter Chas Reilly wrote:

         The Potawatomi prayed for the healing of the water and those participating in the ceremony at Festival Park.

They used rattles and drums to keep time as they sang. During one song, a copper kettle filled with water was held toward the sky. The large crowd that gathered was later given water from that kettle to drink.

Bob and Rhea Laramie

I attended a party at Woodland Park for Portage High School grad Stephanie Laramie, who will be a freshman at Vincennes University in the fall.  Her grandfather, Bob Laramie, coached Phil on several youth soccer teams, and we reminisced about highlights from years past.  Bob knew the names of all 16 of his grandchildren and his 24 great-grandchildren, many of whom he introduced me to.  On hand was an IUN History major (Tyler) whom I knew from Jonathyne Briggs and Nicole Anslover’s classes.  For Fathers Day son Bobby gave Bob, a former steelworker, “Steel Giants” and said one of the authors had signed it, not Steve McShane but Gary Wilk, who had been at a booth with wife Nancy at European Market.

At the Democratic state convention in Indianapolis John Gregg was nominated to oppose Governor Mike Pence along with running mate Christina Hale, a Michigan City native.  East Chicago former judge Lorenzo Arredondo is the party’s attorney-generalnominee, and Glenda Ritz will seek a second term as superintendent of public instruction.

The Cubs swept the Pirates, and Anthony Rizzo pulled off an unusual play that I’ve long advocated.  On first with bases loaded and two out Ben Zobrist hit a grounder to deep short.  Rather than side, Rizzo ran to second in full stride and beat the throw.  He got tagged out overrunning the base, but the man on third, reaching home beforehand, scored.

Adam Hochschild's “Spain in Our Hearts” profiles American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, many of whom were demonized during the Red Scare as "Premature Anti-Fascists." Robert Merriman, the son of a lumberjack, received a grant to study in the Soviet Union during the Great Depression while a grad student at the University of California.   One of his Economics professors at Berkeley was Paul S. Taylor, whose account of Mexican-American steelworkers in the Calumet Region Ed Escobar and I excerpted in “Forging a Community.”  Taylor’s wife was photographer Dorothea Lange.

Dorothea Lange; photo by Paul S. Taylor

Lake Michigan Sunset

“Power politician leaning to the right

Baby’s got a trust fund

That she’ll want to go off like that.”

    Rogue Wave, “Lake Michigan”

Anne Balay posted a photo of a Lake Michigan sunset with Chicago’s Loop in the background.  Out of view are steel mills whose fumes add to the orange glow.  Hope to be on Miller Beach Saturday to celebrate Emma (the painter) Balay’s graduation from college.  Microsoft used Rogue Wave’s song in an ad for its MP3 player Zune, and Rob Kardashian waltzed to “Lake Michigan” on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Steve Pickert posted nine remarks that NBC Olympic commentators would like to take back.  My favorite is the anal retentive dressage analyst who noted, “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.”  At the rowing medal ceremony an announcer’s Freudian slip went, “Ah, isn’t that nice, the wife of the IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew.”

Ron Cohen got me invited to a “meet and greet” event In Miller featuring Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Gregg.  Hosts Michael and Susan Greenwald’s house had a great view of the lake.  Hosting a bridal shower for her daughter, Nancy kicked Ron out of the house so he came from the latest “Bourne” movie.

In a TV ad Gregg introduced himself as a folksy guy with two first names from the small town of Sandborn.  Stating that most political ads are silly, he showed three old friends, Frank, Jerry, and Hobo, who used to “loaf around” at Sandborn’s Blue Jay Restaurant until Hobo got cancer, so now they loaf around at Hobo’s house.  Gregg’s final words: “It might seem like a small thing, but I want to keep Indiana a place where people look out for each other.” An aide gave me a “Gregg for Governor” bumper sticker featuring a big blue mustache and a brochure entitled “I’m John Gregg” that stated, “Some people think that I should shave my mustache, but I’m not going to change who I am to run for Governor.” Let’s hope.

On hand were Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and Ogden Dunes State Representative Karen Tallian. Another former colleague, Charlie Brown, introduced the former Indiana State Assembly Minority Leader as a fighter and referred to an anecdote in Gregg’s 2008 autobiography “From Sandborn to the Statehouse” when the two of them gave Governor Evan Bayh a dressing down for abandoning his support for a bill based on expediency. Gregg quipped that the last mustachioed Indiana governor was Thomas R. Marshall a century ago but that one had to go back even further to find a United States Congressman who became governor, the only reference to his troglodyte opponent Mike Pence.  Marshall once expressed the wish (during the disputed mayoralty election of 1909) that Gary would fall into Lake Michigan. Gregg argued that people from southeastern Indiana feel the same way as Region folks, that politicians in Indianapolis don’t have their best interests at heart.  He asserted that if an important artery linking Indy to Carmel needed repairs, it wouldn’t be neglected or forced to be a toll road like happened to the Cline Avenue Bridge.

I asked Gregg why his election material makes no mention of his Democratic Party affiliation (something that annoyed George Roberts) and added that up here we’re proud to be Democrats.  He replied that he was seeking support from moderate Republicans and following the practice of previous nominees, who recognized that there are more Hoosier registered Republicans than Democrats.  Perhaps he could benefit from literature targeted for Lake County voters that stresses his being a Democrat.  I gave Gregg a copy of “Valor” and told him former Sheriff Roy Dominguez would help in any way he wanted.

Sunday after cooking eggs and kaibasa, I won two of four board games (Acquire and Union Pacific) and then edged out Dick Hagelberg in bridge before dining outside at Popolano’s in Chesterton.  I had the pot roast meal with two bottles of Brooklyn Ale.  Alissa called, excited over a weekend event connected with her new job at Grand Valley State.  One summer she interned for IUN Marketing director Chris Sheid, something she had that on her résumé that gave her a notch up on the more than hundred other applicants.  We’ll see her Wednesday when we attend grandson Anthony’s freshman soccer match.

Chris Young showed me how to post messages and syllabi on IUN’s OnCourse system.  Only three students have registered for my Fall class so far.  Oops.

Back on WVLP as Jerry Davich’s only guest, I got in a plug for “Valor” and mentioned that Jerry is in “Calumet Region Connections” (Steel Shavings, v. 41) nine times, in connection with columns he’s written on such topics as the passing of veterinarian Doc Okone, WW II casualty Irwin Fann, and Anne Balay’s search for gay and lesbian steelworkers (which created much controversy, something that newsman Davich welcomed).  He recently wrote about a Valpo teen dying of a heroin overdose and asked whether I thought drugs were as prevalent in the suburbs as in cities.  Speaking not as an expert, I said that starting in the Sixties, drugs seemed to be everywhere.  Davich told Facebook readers, “Cedar Lake was once a Midwest tourist destination?  Al Capone (gang members) once used to hide out in the Hotel Gary? Richard Hatcher was a political scapegoat for Gary's demise? This is what you missed on today's "Out to Lunch" radio show with special guest James Lane, local historian, author, and all-around fascinating guy. The show will be re-aired this Thursday at noon.”  Kim Hunt responded: “Doc Lane is a fantastic guy AND a great historian.”

Talking to Steve’s two Senior College classes about the Region during the Roaring Twenties, I ran into Veronica Rollins, who took courses from me 40 years ago.  After she mentioned her name, I remembered her.  Also in attendance was Morning Bishop, whose Theater Playhouse I wrote about in “Gary’s First Hundred Years” as an example of positive things going on during the 1990s despite the city’s economic woes.  Born, like me, in 1942, she moved from western Pennsylvania to Gary in 1967, the year Richard Hatcher was elected mayor, with six kids and a husband who deserted them soon afterwards.  After she called into WWCA’s “Talk with the Mayor” show, Hatcher got her a job at Metro Corps and she later became a substance abuse counselor at Gary Drug Treatment Center.  While working on a degree at IUN, she took Performing Arts courses with Garrett Cope.   The Morning Bishop Theater Playhouse started out as a children’s YMCA group. Her vision and doggedness enriched the lives of countless residents.

The Republican establishment is calling for Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin to resign after he claimed on TV that “legitimate rape” doesn’t cause pregnancy because in those cases a woman’s body shuts down.  Of course, the statement, which Akins has partially retracted, ignores the fact that 32,000 pregnancies occur each year as a result of rape.  Akin’s views on abortion are virtually identical to Romney’s, and running mate Paul Ryan co-sponsored a bill with Akin that would have provided abortion funding only in cases of “forcible rape.”  Let’s see Romney try to weasel out of this one.  I predict a backlash among Tea Party fanatics if Akin is forced off the ballot.  Akin’s opponent is Senate incumbent Claire McCaskill, a former prosecutor who specialized in sex crimes and knows Akin’s comments are complete bullshit.

Ann Balay posted this advice: “There’s one thing women’s bodies can shut down, and it’s called the Republican Party.”

Ray Smock repeated something told to him by Lindy Boggs, who served 18 years in Congress following the death of her husband, House Majority Leader, in a plane crash. She said "In politics the party you vote for is never as good as you expect it to be and your opponents are never as bad as you think they will be."  Ray continues, “She was one of that last generation of House members who made friends across the aisle. But her thought is a realistic one and a practical one. During campaigns we demonize one another and then most of the time figure out how to get things done after the election no matter who wins. This has been the case through most of our history.  I do think Lindy's point is harder to swallow in these times of continuous campaigns and never-ending demonizing.”

I checked out “Drood” by novelist Dan Simmons, which deals with the last weird years of Charles Dickens.  Normally I shy away from books that take liberties with historical facts, but Gaard Logan’s book club loved it.  The first few pages remind me of John Updike.